“People inspire you, or they drain you—pick them wisely.” — Hans F. Hansen

Life is hard as it is, and we don’t need any more hassle to add to it. So it goes without saying that being around toxic personalities is one of the worst things you can suffer from.

There’s a lot of them. Just reading this right now, you probably already have a few people in mind. Whether they were with you in college, you work with them, or they’re even in your own family, you do everything you can to avoid them.

Not only are they completely suffocating, studies show that toxic relationships wreak havoc whether they happen to be in the workplace, school, at home or even amongst friends.

So to save ourselves a lot of time and emotional disturbance, we need to learn how to pick up on the signals that someone is toxic as fast as possible. The quicker we learn this, the easier all our lives will be.

Over the course of this article and the next two we’ll go over some infamous types of toxic people and how to know if you are one, and what to do about it.

So for starters, let’s take a look at four types of toxic people we all come across.

1) The Victim

One of the most dangerous and by all means destructive types of toxic people, is the “Victim”.
This person will always appeal to your empathy or sympathy to make you lean towards them in any favorable way.
If they’ve made a mistake, they’ll guilt you into not reprimanding them for it by appealing to your kindness and then use it against you.
This can happen to the point where they will hold you hostage to your own feelings or beliefs, because every time you want to speak out, they will play the victim card.

They eventually harm themselves because they don’t actively deal with pain, they simply use every hardship as a way of garnering sympathy and attracting attention from others.
They end up being rather spoiled and immature, and hardly someone you can count on.

2) The Manipulator

Another extremely poisonous type of person that can completely destroy any environment they’re in.

A manipulator is actually clever. They can navigate their ways through emotional entanglement and they learn quickly the quirks, likes and dislikes of people around them, then use them for their own advantage.
They’re difficult to spot because they will use their intelligence to appear as your friend or as someone on your side, when in reality all they want is something from you for themselves. And if you start to pick up on it and they notice you doing so, they will go to great lengths to have you believe that they actually care about you, don’t fall for it.

3) The Self-Absorbed

This one is in fact one of the easier ones to notice as they are incredibly off-putting. It takes little time to notice how the conversation is always somehow veering towards something that is of interest to them only.

They will always exaggerate whether it’s their achievements or downfalls, and they will always undermine other peoples’ ups and downs in favor of theirs.
They only seek their own advancement or interests and they fake caring about anyone.
Naturally, they are horrible listeners.
They can’t really focus for long periods of time on someone else’s problems. Absolutely torrid time being around them.

4) The Envious

A sign of immaturity and lack of growth, is wanting to be more successful than others out of insecurity.
Instead of wanting you to be just as successful as they are, if not more, an envious person will never rejoice in watching you succeed or seeing you enjoy anything.
They will always see themselves in comparison with others, never truly striving to shape their own personality or even their likes and dislikes.
They can be easily spotted when you notice they don’t have their own unique style or taste. They just copy whomever they’re jealous or envious of.
Sometimes they will make you feel guilty or uneasy just because you’re somewhere they’re not. Don’t fall for this trap.

If you’ve noticed, there’s a pattern amongst these four types. All toxic people have some fundamental similarities, but these four in particular show that clearly.

Someone who is always playing the victim is trying to manipulate you into feeling sorry for them to cut them some slack or to get your attention.

When a person is self-absorbed, they will dwell on their pain and suffering endlessly and will always make you feel like they’re the most tormented soul in the world. They’re usually envious of others because they never think of others’ wellbeing in the first place.

Watch out for these patterns. Don’t waste your time, energy and most importantly, your mental health on these people. They will drain you, and drag you down.

And as the saying goes: “Ain’t nobody got time for that”.